Digitally hanging out

Beyond single responses, sending messages back and forth can be a way of digitally hanging out: even when your messages have barely any textual meaning, they convey an important subtext: “I want to be talking with you.”

The sending itself is the message, whether it’s emoji or stickers or selfies or gifs.

This practice is especially common among teenagers, who often want to hang out with friends for hours on end in ways that seem trivial to adults around them.

Source: Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch